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The Last Man
Even the rocks are not safe from us.
(missing author)
Even the rocks are not safe from us.
(missing author)
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12
We have been told two things about the relationship between technology and nature. The first is that technology has enabled humans to master nature. The second is that technology has caused humans to destroy nature.
At the intersection of these two stories lies the idea of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene contains a paradox: the term recognizes the immense power humans wield over the rest of creation, such that nothing on the planet is immune. Yet this same power poses a serious threat to humans. We’ve shaped the earth so intensively to suit our needs that it can no longer support them. (Some of us. Some needs.)
In this issue, we try to tell a different story about the entanglements of nature and technology. No surprise that the end of the world looms large. Big Tech teams up with Big Oil to build systems for smarter drilling. The residents of a small town continue to fall ill long after the microchip plant shuts down.
But there are also reasons for optimism. There are movements demanding a more “correct relation with the non-human world,” to borrow one contributor’s phrase. This issue offers some materials for imagining what such a relation might look like.
so good
We have been told two things about the relationship between technology and nature. The first is that technology has enabled humans to master nature. The second is that technology has caused humans to destroy nature.
At the intersection of these two stories lies the idea of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene contains a paradox: the term recognizes the immense power humans wield over the rest of creation, such that nothing on the planet is immune. Yet this same power poses a serious threat to humans. We’ve shaped the earth so intensively to suit our needs that it can no longer support them. (Some of us. Some needs.)
In this issue, we try to tell a different story about the entanglements of nature and technology. No surprise that the end of the world looms large. Big Tech teams up with Big Oil to build systems for smarter drilling. The residents of a small town continue to fall ill long after the microchip plant shuts down.
But there are also reasons for optimism. There are movements demanding a more “correct relation with the non-human world,” to borrow one contributor’s phrase. This issue offers some materials for imagining what such a relation might look like.
so good
13
Technological mastery is a myth. Prometheus is not coming. In truth, everything is dirty, even the digital—especially the digital. Computers were supposed to be made of sunshine: “all light and clean because they are nothing but signals,” as another contributor to this issue famously wrote on her first computer, an HP-86, decades ago. As she already knew then, they are less pristine than promised. Their metaphors are ethereal but their footprints are filthy. They too are implicated in armageddon.
The renewable transition itself may involve new kinds of destruction.
But recognizing that nature is human-entangled and vice versa opens up more options than conservation. Recognizing that there was never any Eden to return to lets you look ahead. Indeed, the most hopeful futures may come from the darkest histories, where the lessons of resistance have been well learned. The world has ended before; there have been many armageddons. But this also means: We have to learn how to mourn. To mourn without despair; to mourn towards a future.
Technological mastery is a myth. Prometheus is not coming. In truth, everything is dirty, even the digital—especially the digital. Computers were supposed to be made of sunshine: “all light and clean because they are nothing but signals,” as another contributor to this issue famously wrote on her first computer, an HP-86, decades ago. As she already knew then, they are less pristine than promised. Their metaphors are ethereal but their footprints are filthy. They too are implicated in armageddon.
The renewable transition itself may involve new kinds of destruction.
But recognizing that nature is human-entangled and vice versa opens up more options than conservation. Recognizing that there was never any Eden to return to lets you look ahead. Indeed, the most hopeful futures may come from the darkest histories, where the lessons of resistance have been well learned. The world has ended before; there have been many armageddons. But this also means: We have to learn how to mourn. To mourn without despair; to mourn towards a future.